From my perspective an IT organization should have SLAs, OLAs, Service Targets, etc. defined and agreed with the customer for Incident Management and Service Desk and overall for that matter. I think that processes are bound for failure if without these targets and agreements. However, management constantly debates that SLAs are not an important factor and the processes will not fail.

Anyone disagrees with me? Thanks much....

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Waseem

Last edited by wahmed on Thu Apr 17, 2008 3:04 am; edited 1 time in total

I would agree that the are much needed. in reality though they can get left to the wayside as things do operate without these in place or documented but as we know they will be ess efficient and effective etc._________________Mark O'Loughlin
ITSM / ITIL Consultant

even if they arent document and agreed - your customer/the business expectation is that your service desk will answer the phone/email , that incidents will be fixed , and that some incidents need to be fixed faster than others !

the Business is using sla's even if "management" thinks they are not important.. I'd suggest a quick look at your management objectives/job description would show the measures that the business thinks are important !

if you havent got these defined you cant measure them so you cant improve them

Hi,
If you are an internal IT department (e.g. Cost-center), management would always try to ignore need of agreed SLAs, cause they never imagine the IT as a business enabler and they do not see the contribution IT makes to overall business.

Ask management -

1. What is the business loss (includes $, reputation, customer trust, 'lost to other' customers etc) if a given critical service is not available for 'N' hours.
2. Can business afford to loose that much money and still remain in the compitiion?
3. If not, what is the max time you can afford? That's the Service Level target.
4. Design process/resources/OLA's accordingly. It may attact some funds. This is why management does not want to talk about SLA's etc.

If it is not defined and agreed no one from IT tries /designs process/resources to achieve the same. And one day it is bound to happens and with unexpected size.

From my perspective an IT organization should have SLAs, OLAs, Service Targets, etc. defined and agreed with the customer for Incident Management and Service Desk and overall for that matter. Waseem

I think you should avoid creating SLA on your internal processes but relate it to your services. Handling Incidents is only one way to ensure that your availability according to the SLA is fulfilled. It might be so that this was what you meant but I also see a risk for misunderstanding. Many are still thinking technology and ITIL is far more than that. When you start looking into the e2e mgmnt and Service Impact Analysis this become very obvious._________________Eric Fogelstrom
Founder/CEO CompITIL
ITIL Service Manager